I emailed Rob Waller, the founder of StatusPeople, and asked him a few of the ones that seem to be floating around on the internet:

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Me: So, some people are concerned that you only take a sample of the last 500 followers. If someone tweets about her iPad and she’s suddenly being followed by a bunch of bots with iPad spam links and you only take the last 500 followers, how does that affect her score?Rob: We analyse only 500 records but we spread this over your last 5,000 records. So if you have less than 5,000 followers which the majority of Twitter users do our tool will not be affected by an influx of new followers. Overall we believe our App provides an accurate and informative score for those with up to 10,000 followers. And for those with more it provides an accurate reflection of your current follower activity. We are however working on an update which we believe should push the accuracy up to a couple hundred thousand followers.

Me: Is there a percentage point where it’s obvious that someone’s buying followers? I’ve seen accounts with 85% fake, 50% fake, 30% fake, 15% fake, etc. Is there a percentage point where you’d say, ‘Yeah, that person DEFINITELY bought followers’?Rob: This is very difficult to say and I can’t comment on an individual case. Of course if you score above 70% then you’ve probably either purchased followers or someone has purchased them for you — as was the case with British MP Louise Mensch.

I will also add if your Twitter account generates a score of over 20% fake followers then you have a problem. You need to think about why you might be generating such a poor score. Is it your content, who you follow, what you link to, etc, etc. And of course always remember follower quality is far more important than follower quantity.

Me: If I put in the same Twitter handle a few times, is it taking it from the same data each time?Rob: We cache our data for a short period to make our App more efficient so if you put the same handle in more than once it will more than likely retrieve the cached data rather than the latest data.Me: What constitutes as a “fake” account?Rob: There are a number of signs that combine to define a fake account. But one of the main signs is the relationship between followers and friends. Fake accounts tend to follow a lot of people but don’t have many followers. Or in other words low followers, high friends.